1. Technical Field
The embodiments herein relates to systems for distribution of additional content including television commercials. Particularly, the embodiments herein relates to the field of monitoring the broadcast of advertisements.
2. Description of Related Art
For a television broadcast or a radio broadcast, it is often difficult, if not impossible to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement(s). Advertisements are inserted in between consecutive television programs or typically in advertisement slots which are typically available for a pre-determined period of time in-between the air time of a television program. Typically, the advertisements are recorded in a suitable electronic format and handed over to the television channel broadcasters, who would in turn arrange for the advertisements to be played back during pre-determined advertisement slots. However, there is no guarantee that these advertisements would be aired at those pre-determined advertisement slots.
Given the fact that the advertisement slots are billed given the duration of the advertisement, the popularity of the television channel and other related factors, the airing of advertisements needs to be tracked in order to ensure that the advertisers are indeed being charged for the services that they really make use of. The aforementioned scenario is equally applicable to radio broadcast wherein the advertisement slots are charged based on the duration of the advertisement and the popularity of the corresponding radio program, amongst other factors.
Therefore, there was felt a need for a system that could accurately track the playback of advertisements. There was also felt a need for a system that could verify whether the advertisements were actually aired at the relevant advertisement slots, as promised by channel broadcasters. There was also felt a need for a system that would generate a report accurately reflecting all the parameters involved in airing of advertisements on television/radio channels, thereby enabling advertisers to devise an effective and efficient advertising strategy.
Several attempts have been previously made in order to overcome the hitherto drawbacks. U.S. Pat. No. 8,571,931 envisaged a system and method for targeted distribution of advertisements. The system envisaged by this patent application includes an advertisement management system which monitors the states of one or more clients in the television distribution system and determines when an advertisement is required. The advertisement management system, on receiving a request for an advertisement retrieves one or more features that correspond to the subscribers in the television distribution system and subsequently selects a segmented program and the corresponding advertisement(s). However, this patent does not envisage tracking the airing of advertisements and determining whether the advertisements were really broadcasted or not.
US Patent Application Publication No. 20060195866 envisages a system that monitors television systems for power on/off state and a tuning configuration. The content provider provides advertising content to one or more television systems when they are powered on and configured to receive the advertising content. Subsequently, the content provider keeps a count on the number of television based systems that received the advertisement content and also on the number of television based system that in fact displayed the received advertisements. However, this patent application does not disclose, making use of video signatures/audio signatures to track the play back of advertisements.
US Patent Application Publication No. 20130173379 envisages a computer implemented method for monitoring the effectiveness of advertisement broadcasts. The method envisaged by this patent application involves the step of detecting that an is advertisement has been aired, and monitoring the broadcast network for the activity attributable to airing of the advertisement. Further, the method develops a quantitative relationship between the activity, for example, surfing the internet for the advertised product/service, and the number of listeners who listened to the advertisement. Firstly, the system envisaged by this patent application is restricted to radio broadcast network. Secondly, this patent application does not envisage making use of video signatures/audio signatures to track whether the advertisement was actually broadcasted or not.
WIPO Patent Application Publication No. 2008124541 teaches a computer implemented method for selecting an advertisement for broadcast. The method involves the steps of identifying the availability of a television advertisement, identifying a context associated with the television advertisement availability, receiving the parameters associated with the television advertisement, and selecting one or more advertisements. However, this patent application does not teach using audio/video signatures for tracking the playback of advertisements. Therefore, in view of the aforementioned drawbacks, there was felt a need for a system and method that can overcome the hitherto disadvantages.
The above mentioned shortcomings, disadvantages and problems are addressed herein and which will be understood by reading and studying the following specification.